Choosing the right storyboard for Animoto Marketing videos

Pre-built storyboards vs. starting from scratch

The first step to creating a video with Animoto Marketing is choosing a storyboard. Start your video by either selecting a pre-built storyboard or starting from scratch. Starting from scratch allows you to start from a completely blank canvas. Pre-built storyboards are videos that have already been created and can be easily customized. These storyboards create structure for your video and were built with social media best practices in mind.

You can customize any pre-built storyboard to create a video that presents your style, brand, and vision. You’ll use the storyboard editor to adjust fonts, colors, timing, and other design features.

Choosing a storyboard

All of our storyboards can be adapted for different purposes, but each has its own unique features and style. Before you start, we recommend thinking about the overall goals and content of your video. Are you using educational content to engage potential customers? Are you showcasing your products to stand out from the crowd? Are you promoting your brand and services? Are you announcing a special event? Once you’ve determined your goal, select a storyboard that makes sense. Remember, you can always change the color and font to fit your brand, so make a selection based on content over colors.

Storyboard samples and default content

Each pre-built storyboard contains default content to showcase its unique layout and story and provide inspiration for your video. Click on a storyboard to view the sample video.

While each example focuses on a specific type of business and use case, they can be easily adapted to create a variety of types of videos. Instead of focusing on the business used in the example, we recommend looking for specific features of the storyboard that appeal to you and the video you’re creating.

Customizing your storyboard

Once you’ve selected your storyboard, it’s time to get started creating your video! You’ll just use your content to replace the default content to make the video your own. Simply drag and drop your uploaded photos and video clips into the blocks to replace the default photos and video clips. You can customize the storyboard to help bring your content to life, as well as add, delete, and rearrange sections of the layout easily. Also, note that blocks are flexible so you can always use a photo in a video block or a video clip in a photo block.

Switching storyboards

To change the style of your video, just click the “Style” icon on the left-hand side of your screen. You’ll see the marketing video style you’ve already chosen. To give your video a different look, click the blue CHANGE button.

Clicking CHANGE will bring you to a screen that lists all of our marketing video styles. (Take a look at this blog post describing each style for more detail.) Click on a style to see a short preview; then, when you know which one you want, click SELECT below that style to choose it.

You can change styles as many times as you want, or combine our new “Change Style” feature with a change in your video’s aspect ratio to give it an entirely new look.